I am the Chief Insights Officer for Forbes Media responsible for managing Forbes' Insights thought leadership research division, as well as the Forbes CMO Practice. I am the co-author of "Profitable Brilliance: How Professional Services Firms Become Thought Leaders" now available on Amazon http://amzn.to/OETmMz as the previously published "In the Line of Money: Branding Yourself Strategically to the Financial Elite" available on Amazon http://amzn.to/AuHRN9
Bruce H. Rogers is the co-author of the recently published book Profitable Brilliance: How Professional Service Firms Become Thought Leaders

Gil Elbaz Builds Factual To Be The World's Data Steward

“I wasn’t the most typical 13-year old. I was thinking about data before I knew what a computer looked like,” says data and search pioneer Gil Elbaz, founder and CEO of Factual. Gil refers to his rapture at being introduced to his first data software application, Excel, and how he would use it to catalog and track anything and everything, from the weather to the songs his parents listened to on the radio. Gil would later hone those data science skills and go on to co-found Applied Semantics (ASI) in 1999, which was sold to GoogleGoogle for $102 million in 2003. Google would leverage the acquisition to launch AdSense, the contextual display ad platform that now generates over $10 billion. Not bad for a data geek.

Gil Elbaz, Founder and CEO, Factual

Founded in 2008 , Factual is an Andreessen-Horowitz-backed start-up that has, over the last seven years, created a repository data set the size of which might only be rivaled by Google. Factual positions itself as a location platform that enables personalized and contextually relevant mobile experiences by providing definitive global data. The company is currently focused on being the foremost authority on location dataabout a business or landmark. Its “Global Places” data covers over 65 million local businesses and points of interest in 50 countries. Companies and services like Bing, Turn , Samsung and YelpYelp use the Factual platform to create targeted and personalized apps and advertising. Their Series A round brought in $25 million, providing runway to build the business. The L.A.-based company now has 85 employees (and growing) and has opened engineering offices in San Francisco and Shanghai.

Yet Gil’s vision for what Factual can become is much loftier. A self-admitted data addict and one of the world’s foremost authorities on data and analytics, Gil was always interested in patterns that define how the world works and formed his belief that an organized, democratic and productive world is one where decisions are based on good data. But who is responsible for authenticating the data? That’s where Factual comes in.

“Factual’s vision is to be the steward of the world’s data to ensure that it’s good, high quality and accessible. We don’t see a lot of companies that have created a culture and DNA around factual data and the need to democratize access to data to empower anyone to be innovative – to come up with ideas about what they want to build, what questions they want to answer, what tools they want to bring to consumers. That’s the real purpose for Factual. Our job is to push this raw data through a complex data stack to predict which streams are factual,” says Elbaz. Major mobile companies use Factual’s location data in order to build maps in local search and offer personalized services. Factual provides the context of who mobile users are, where they’ve been and where they are going.

The company spent its first two years perfecting its deep stack of technologies around processing massive amounts of data. “It took us two years just to get to the point where we were ready to launch. Six months later, we realized that mobile and location were the massive opportunity. In early 2010, we announced that we would be providing data to power Facebook Places just as Facebook was getting into location and ramping up its mobile monetization initiatives,” continues Elbaz.

In many ways, Factual is replicating Gil’s history with the launch of ASI. “The big claim to fame of Applied Semantics was that we built this incredible data technology. But we morphed into a company that uses that technology to target ads based on context. We invented context based ads. We called it AdSense, and today, AdSense, of course, is driving many billions of dollars to Google. It was exciting to be part of Google to help continue the growth of Adsense,” says Elbaz.

“I learned a lot from my time with Google. Google is an example of a data-first company, a company that is looking to get access to a wealth of data, so that it can offer data driven tools that make life better and simpler. Its giant data assets represent both an opportunity and a huge threat to every other company on the planet. Every company needs to be predictive, contextual and offer highly personalized products or services. Companies like Factual are opening up these access points to allow companies of all sizes to take advantage of data,” says Elbaz.

“I also have tremendous respect for Google. They are very good at challenging people to think big and that it’s okay to set the goal so high that you miss. They don’t expect anybody to ever hit their quarterly goal. It’s about setting the bar high and trying to achieve what almost seems impossible. That was partly what inspired us to create Factual, to use data to solve the world’s grand challenges,” continues Elbaz.

Gil grew up in Cincinnati and San Antonio, the son of educator parents. His Dad was a school principal and his Mom a teacher. While he exhibited an innate love of data that would lead him to an engineering career path and a degree from Cal Tech in Los Angeles, his parents did instill a love of learning. “They inspired me to love learning. It’s why I would ask them to drop me off at bookstores, so I could devour publications in the reference section and read encyclopedias,” says Elbaz. After college Gil headed to Silicon Valley to work with several companies working on database management. “I loved data anyway, so it was the sensible thing to keep honing my skills. It wasn’t until I first experienced the Web in 1994 that I got inspired to want to change the world myself. Three years later, after seeing the web I realized that information is the most foundational thing to how the world operates,” continues Elbaz. He then moved back to L.A. to work on starting a data science company that would be based on a new way of organizing information called ontological reasoning.

That company was originally called Oingo which stood for Open Index for NextNext Generation Ontology, which seemed like a good idea at the time. “At the time, we thought that was cool because it was a catchy name, and the band Oingo Boingo (of “Weird Science” fame) had renamed themselves Boingo which meant the Oingo name was up for grabs, and the domain was available, which we bought for $35.00. It was kind of goofy in retrospect. But then, when we had to be more of a serious buttoned up, technology company after the dotcom bust in 2001, we renamed it to sound more like something you could trust for really deep technological capability, Applied Semantics,” says Elbaz. The rest, as they say, is history.

What does the future hold for Factual? “We see huge opportunity for improvement across every category of mobile app experience . The global market for mobile apps, ads and search is over $100 billion. We think we can optimize, augment and improve all of that activity. There’s plenty for us to do by focusing on this market. We’re signing up customers all the time. We’re busy delighting those customers and building our business.”

Bruce H. Rogers is the co-author of the recently published book Profitable Brilliance: How Professional Service Firms Become Thought Leader

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